MINNEAPOLIS — John Anderson is hopeful his 40th season as the Minnesota Gophers baseball coach will get started at some point in February. The 39th did not amount to much, shut down by the pandemic in mid-March, with the Gophers at 8-10 in a rugged nonconference schedule and still two weeks from a Big Ten opener.
Four decades in, any coach would be permitted to suggest that he or she had seen it all, but that's far from the truth for Anderson in 2020.
Most dramatically, he has seen the change that COVID-19 has made to our planet, and most interestingly, he has followed the changes from Major League Baseball that will transform the relationship between colleges and the pros.
"Baseball is more determined to take charge of identifying and developing the best prospects than in the past," Anderson said. "And when this new approach shakes out, I'm confident that there's going to be a significant uptick in talent for college baseball — particularly in Power Five baseball."
That's the football term for the SEC, Big Ten, ACC, Big 12 and Pac-12, and it also can be applied to the top echelon of college baseball.
There are two big-picture items in MLB's upcoming changes:
The number of official minor league teams is being reduced from 160 to 120, and the number of rounds in the draft are being reduced from what had been 40 to 25.
"They only had the five-round draft this summer because of the pandemic, of course," Anderson said. "That means a lot of juniors that would've signed in a normal year will be back as seniors in 2021, if we get a chance to play.
"Longer term, there are also going to be juniors that would've been taken between (rounds) 26 and 40 and maybe signed that are going to come back as seniors."
MLB will save a few bucks by reducing the draft, but Anderson thinks this also has much to do with it:
"They have found out that college baseball does a very good job of developing players. We have the analytical equipment, we have excellent facilities, and we have the bright young people with college degrees that know how to get the information across to the players.
"Major league teams have been hiring our coaches to work in their organizations, hiring our people to work in their evaluation and research areas."
Anderson named five of his team managers/analysts since 2014 that are now with big league organizations: Preston Higbe (Seattle), Kan Ikeda (Detroit), Sam Niedorf (Texas), Nick Kropidlowski (Cincinnati) and Ryan Goll (Baltimore).
"I'm getting calls frequently, asking, 'Do you have any more like those people?' " Anderson said. "I never fought against the analytics, the metrics, but it's been the last four, five years that I'm all in on the idea that the information — when used properly — can make a real difference with our players."
